Tyson Foods (TSN.N), the largest U.S. meat processor, has invested in an Israeli biotech company developing a way to grow affordable meat in a laboratory that takes live animals out of the equation.

Future Meat Technologies focuses on producing fat and muscle cells that are the core building blocks of meat, and is one of several firms working on technology to match rising demand for meat without adding more pressure on land from livestock. The firm’s founder and chief scientist, Yaakov Nahmias, said cultured meat typically had a production price of about $10,000 per kg but so far his company had reduced that to $800/kg and had “a clear roadmap to $5–$10/kg by 2020.” Tyson’s venture capital arm has supported the Jerusalem-based startup by co-leading $2.2 million in seed investment.

“We continue to invest significantly in our traditional meat business but also believe in exploring additional opportunities for growth that give consumers more choices,” said Justin Whitmore, Tyson’s executive vice president for corporate strategy. In December, Tyson raised its stake in plant-based protein makerBeyond Meat. Demand for meat is expected to double between 2000 and 2050, when the earth’s population is set to surpass 9 billion, and proponents of growing meat in the lab say it is the only way to meet such demand without destroying the environment.

Freezing of gait, an absence of forward progression of the feet despite the intention to walk, is a debilitating symptom of Parkinson’s disease. Laser shoes that project a line on the floor to the rhythm of the footsteps help trigger the person to walk. The shoes benefit the wearer significantly, according to research by the University of Twente and Radboud university medical center (Netherlands), which has been published in Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Walking problems are common and very disabling in Parkinson’s disease. In particular, freezing of gait is a severe symptom which generally develops in more advanced stages. It can last seconds to minutes and is generally triggered by the stress of an unfamiliar environment or when medication wears off. Because the foot remains glued to the floor but the upper body continues moving forward, it can cause the person to lose her balance and fall.Parkinson patient experience a unique phenomenon. By consciously looking at objects on the floor, such as the lines from a zebra crossing (‘visual cues’), and stepping over them, they are able to overcome their blockages during walking. This activates other circuits in the brain, hereby releasing the blockages and allowing the person to continue walking. This is why patients often make use of floor tiles at home. With the laser shoes, these useful cues can be continuously applied in everyday life, to walk better and safer. The principle behind the laser shoes is simple: upon foot contact, the left shoe projects a line on the floor in front of the right foot. The patient steps over or towards the line, which activates the laser on the right shoe, and so on.

The present research study shows a beneficial effect in a large group of patients. The number of ‘freezing‘ episodes was reduced by 46% with the use of the shoes. The duration of these episodes was also divided by two. Both effects were strongest in patients while they had not taken their medication yet. This is typically when patients experience the most problems with walking. But an improvement was also seen after the patients had been taking their medication.

A new, stable artificial photosynthesis device doubles the efficiency of harnessing sunlight to break apart both fresh and salt water, generating hydrogen that can then be used in fuel cells.

The device could also be reconfigured to turn carbon dioxide back into fuel.

Hydrogen is the cleanest-burning fuel, with water as its only emission. But hydrogen production is not always environmentally friendly. Conventional methods require natural gas or electrical power. The method advanced by the new device, called direct solar water splitting, only uses water and light from the sun.

“If we can directly store solar energy as a chemical fuel, like what nature does with photosynthesis, we could solve a fundamental challenge of renewable energy,” said Zetian Mi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan who led the research while at McGill University in Montreal.

Faqrul Alam Chowdhury, a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering at McGill, said the problem with solar cells is that they cannot store electricity without batteries, which have a high overall cost and limited life.

The device is made from the same widely used materials as solar cells and other electronics, including silicon and gallium nitride (often found in LEDs). With an industry-ready design that operates with just sunlight and seawater, the device paves the way for large-scale production of clean hydrogen fuel.

Previous direct solar water splitters have achieved a little more than 1 percent stable solar-to-hydrogen efficiency in fresh or saltwater. Other approaches suffer from the use of costly, inefficient or unstable materials, such as titanium dioxide, that also might involve adding highly acidic solutions to reach higher efficiencies. Mi and his team, however, achieved more than 3 percent solar-to-hydrogen efficiency.

Ninety percent of the world’s data has been created in the last two years, with a massive 2.5 quintillion bytes generated every single day. As you might suspect, this causes some challenges when it comes to storage. While one option is to gradually turn every square inch of free land into giant data centers, researchers from the Center for Advanced Optoelectronic Functional Material Research, Northeast Normal University (China) may have come up with a more elegant solution. In a potential breakthrough, they have developed a new nanofilm — 80 times thinner than a human hair — that is able to store large amounts of data holographically. A single 10-by-10 cm piece of this film could archive more than 1,000 times the amount of data found on a DVD. By our count, that means around 8.5 TB of data. This data can also be retrieved incredibly quickly, at speeds of up to 1GB per second: The equivalent of 20 times the reading speed of modern flash memory.

In the journal Optical Materials Express, the researchers detail the fabrication process of the new film. This involves using a laser to write information onto silver nanoparticles on a titanium dioxide (titania) semiconductor film. This stores the data in the form of 3D holograms, thereby allowing it to be compressed into smaller spaces than regular optical systems.

That’s exciting enough, but what really makes the work promising is the fact that the data is stored in a way that is stable. Previous attempts at creating films for holographic data storage have proven less resilient than alternate storage methods since they can be wiped by exposure to ultraviolet light. That makes them less-than-viable options for long-term information storage. The creators of this new film, however, have shown that it has a high stability even in the presence of such light. This environmental stability means that the device could be used outside — or even conceivably in harsher radiation conditions like outer space.

Going forward, the researchers aim to test their new film by putting it through its paces outdoors. Should all go according to plan, it won’t be too long before this is available on the market. We might be willing to throw down a few bucks on Kickstarter for a piece!

The researcher team of Tokyo Tech discovered that the film constructed by assembling a nontoxic filamentous virus functions as a heat dissipation material, and that can be simply prepared by drying the virus aqueous solution at room temperature. This discovery is expected to elucidate the mechanism of new heat transport in electronics.

Organic polymeric materials generally have low thermal conductivity and are not suitable for rapid heat dissipation of electric and electronic equipment in the past. In order to improve its thermal conductivity, it has been considered effective to heat transfer through a covalent bond by “orientation processing” in which molecules are aligned in the same direction, or to composite with an inorganic material.

A research team led by Assistant Professor Toshiki Sawada and Professor Takeshi Serizawa is focusing on the capability to form regularly assembled structures in a wide scale from nano to macro (so called hierarchical assembly) observed in the natural systems and the hierarchically assembled structures prepared in this way, the phenomenon where molecules accumulate around the perimeter as an aqueous solution in which molecules are dissolved evaporates (coffee ring effect) was utilized to assemble a filamentous virus for the film preparation. As a result, it was found that the thermal diffusivity at the edge of the film drastically enhanced to a value comparable to that of inorganic glass, and that facilitates the utilization of the hierarchically assembled biomacromolecule. This helps future development of electric and electronic devices composed of not only viruses but also various naturally derived molecules.

(a) Phage and (b) hexagonally assembled structures of the phages in the film.

Until now, orientation processing and compositing with inorganic materials have been considered effective for the high thermal conductivity of organic polymeric materials. However, since this virus film can be prepared by evaporating an aqueous solution of a filamentous virus at room temperature, it is expected to lead to the establishment of a method for easily constructing heat dissipation materials under mild conditions that do not require special operations.

Are you aware of the fact that some of us canhear colors? Synesthesia, which is a neurological condition causing the stimulation of one sense to produce experiences in a different one, affects around 4% of the population. Thanks to the work of scientists from the Lodz University of Technology (Poland), soon there will be a way for the rest of us to experience a similar sensation too.

The “Hearing Art” project is an innovative system which enables its users to read digital images through the use of sound. Using motion sensor technology to map out the placement of each color in the chosen image, the app generates a sound suitable for each color. In order to do so, the system analyses the hue, saturation, and value of a color and uses its placement on the color wheel to emit an appropriate sound.

While the system could serve as an additional auditory sensation for just about any art lover, the researchers point towards the revolutionary potential of the technology for visually impaired people. Once implemented, the innovation could make art galleries much more accessible by enabling blind people to experience visual art in a completely different way. The project’s developers admit that the technology would not work for people who were completely blind from birth – it is however suitable for people whose visual impairment is partial, or acquired later in life.

So how does it work in practice? “The user aims at a specific point of a painting. As they start moving their arm in its vicinity, they begin hearing a melody, as each color, and each pixel of the image is assigned a different tone” – explains one of the system’s creators, Damian Jóźwiak.

While the project takes advantage of the fact that visually impaired people often experience a heightened sense of hearing, and are thus more sensitive to sound stimuli, the technology has been adapted for sighted participants as well. The motion sensor is marked with a red dot on the system’s display, which shows its placement on the original painting. By tracking the placement of the sensor on the image, users are able to associate each color with a sound.

As for its accuracy, preliminary tests conducted in the Lodz chapter of the Polish Association of the Blind have revealed an 80% success rate in “reading” colors with the use of the technology.The biggest shock came when one of the participants has attempted calling one of their visually impaired friends – the recipient was able to recognize 100% of the sounds and identify each color assigned to it – adds Jóźwiak.

So what’s in store for the project in the near future? The creators of the “Hearing Art” see its future in museums, where it could be experience by visually impaired and sighted patrons alike. If you feel like hearing colors could be an interesting experience, feel free to plan a trip to the Museum of Lodz in the near future, as the application will find its first home there.

Harnessing energy from the sun, which emits immensely powerful energy from the center of the solar system, is one of the key targets for achieving a sustainable energy supply. Light energy can be converted directly into electricity using electrical devices called solar cells. To date, most solar cells are made of silicon, a material that is very good at absorbing light. But silicon panels are expensive to produce.

Scientists have been working on an alternative, made from perovskite structures. True perovskite, a mineral found in the earth, is composed of calcium, titanium and oxygen in a specific molecular arrangement. Materials with that same crystal structure are called perovskite structures. Perovskite structures work well as the light-harvesting active layer of a solar cell because they absorb light efficiently but are much cheaper than silicon. They can also be integrated into devices using relatively simple equipment. For instance, they can be dissolved in solvent and spray coated directly onto the substrate.

Materials made from perovskite structures could potentially revolutionize solar cell devices, but they have a severe drawback: they are often very unstable, deteriorating on exposure to heat. This has hindered their commercial potential. The Energy Materials and Surface Sciences Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), led by Prof. Yabing Qi, has developed devices using a new perovskite material that is stable, efficient and relatively cheap to produce, paving the way for their use in the solar cells of tomorrow. This material has several key features:

First, it is completely inorganic – an important shift, because organic components are usually not thermostable and degrade under heat. Since solar cells can get very hot in the sun, heat stability is crucial. By replacing the organic parts with inorganic materials, the researchers made the perovskite solar cells much more stable.. “The solar cells are almost unchanged after exposure to light for 300 hours,” says Dr. Zonghao Liu, an author on the paper.

Second feature: Inorganic perovskite solar cells tend to have lower light absorption than organic-inorganic hybrids, however, but the OIST researchers doped their new cells with manganese in order to improve their performance. Manganese changes the crystal structure of the material, boosting its light harvesting capacity. “Just like when you add salt to a dish to change its flavor, when we add manganese, it changes the properties of the solar cell,” says Liu.

Thirdly, in these solar cells, the electrodes that transport current between the solar cells and external wires are made of carbon, rather than of the usual gold. Such electrodes are significantly cheaper and easier to produce, in part because they can be printed directly onto the solar cells. Fabricating gold electrodes, on the other hand, requires high temperatures and specialist equipment such as a vacuum chamber.

The findings are published in Advanced Energy Materials. Postdoctoral scholars Dr. Jia Liang and Dr. Zonghao Liu made major contributions to this work.

By learning how rabies virus travels in the brain, Anti-Parkinson’sdrug can be delivered deep in the brain where currently the drugs are not able to reach. Rabies virus has the capability to trick the nervous system and cross the blood brain barrier. This trick could be used for drug design. Glycoprotein 29 present on the rabies virus is attached to a nanoparticle stuffed full of deferoxamine ( Anti-Parkinson’s medication) and injected into the brain to trick the brain.

Rabies virus may have some tricks to bypass the blood brain barrier, this trick can be used to treat disease that require drugs to effectively cross the blood brain barrier, finds a new study.

The researchers can now exploit rabies viruses machineryto deliver a Parkinson’s disease medication directly to the brain. Upon injection the nanoparticles grab excess iron andrelieve symptoms. While the common cause of Parkinson’s disease is unknown, it has been proved that accumulation of iron in neurons is one of the commonest features of Parkinson’s disease.

Deferoxamine is a metal-grabbing compound andsop up the excess iron in patients. But a large quantity of this drug needs to reach the brain in order for them work.
To usher deferoxamine into the brain, the researchers Yan-Zhong Chang, Xin Lou, Guangjun Nie took advantage of a key part of the rabies virus– Glycoprotein 29.
When they injected this iron-grabbing nanoparticles into mouse models of Parkinson’s disease, the iron levelsdropped and this reduced brain damage caused by Parkinson’s disease.

Physicists at the University of Warwick have published new research in the Journal Sciencethat could literally squeeze more power out of solar cells by physically deforming each of the crystals in the semiconductors used by photovoltaic cells. The paper entitled the “Flexo-Photovoltaic Effect” was written by Professor Marin Alexe, Ming-Min Yang, and Dong Jik Kim who are all based in the University of Warwick’s Department of Physics.

The Warwick researchers looked at the physical constraints on the current design of most commercial solar cells which place an absolute limit on their efficiency. Most commercial solar cells are formed of two layers creating at their boundary a junction between two kinds of semiconductors, p-type with positive charge carriers (holes which can be filled by electrons) and n-type with negative charge carriers (electrons). When light is absorbed, the junction of the two semiconductors sustains an internal field splitting the photo-excited carriers in opposite directions, generating a current and voltage across the junction. Without such junctions the energycannot be harvested and the photo-exited carriers will simply quickly recombine eliminating any electrical charge. That junction between the two semiconductors is fundamental to getting power out of such a solar cell but it comes with an efficiency limit. This Shockley-Queisser Limit means that of all the power contained in sunlight falling on an ideal solar cell in ideal conditions only a maximum of 33.7% can ever be turned into electricity.

There is however another way that some materials can collect charges produced by the photons of the sun or from elsewhere. The bulk photovoltaic effect occurs in certain semiconductors and insulators where their lack of perfect symmetry around their central point (their non-centrosymmetric structure) allows generation of voltage that can be actually larger than the band gap of that material. Unfortunately the materials that are known to exhibit the anomalous photovoltaic effect have very low power generation efficiencies, and are never used in practical power-generation systems. The Warwick team wondered if it was possible to take the semiconductors that are effective in commercial solar cells and manipulate or push them in some way so that they too could be forced into a non-centrosymmetric structure and possibly therefore also benefit from the bulk photovoltaic effect.

“Extending the range of materials that can benefit from the bulk photovoltaic effect has several advantages: it is not necessary to form any kind of junction; any semiconductor with better light absorption can be selected for solar cells, and finally, the ultimate thermodynamic limit of the power conversion efficiency, so-called Shockley-Queisser Limit, can be overcome“, explains Professor Marin Alexe (University of Warwick).

Flexible televisions, tablets and phones as well as ‘truly wearable’ smart tech are a step closer thanks to a nanoscale transistor created by researchers at The University of Manchester and Shandong University in China. The international team has developed an ultrafast, nanoscale transistor – known as a thin film transistor, or TFT, – made out of an oxide semiconductor. The TFT is the first oxide-semiconductor based transistor that is capable of operating at a benchmark speed of 1 GHz. This could make the next generation electronic gadgets even faster, brighter and more flexible than ever before. A TFT is a type of transistor usually used in a liquid crystal display (LCD). These can be found in most modern gadgets with LCD screens such as smart phones, tablets and high-definition televisions.

How do they work? LCD features a TFT behind each individual pixel and they act as individual switches that allow the pixels to change state rapidly, making them turn on and off much more quickly. But most current TFTs are silicon-based which are opaque, rigid and expensive in comparison to the oxide semiconductor family of transistors which the team from the UK and China are developing. Whilst oxide TFTs will improve picture on LCD displays, it is their flexibility that is even more impressive.

“TVs can already be made extremely thin and bright. Our work may help make TV more mechanically flexible and even cheaper to produce. “But, perhaps even more importantly, our GHz transistors may enable medium or even high performance flexible electronic circuits, such as truly wearable electronics. “Wearable electronics requires flexibility and in many cases transparency, too. This would be the perfect application for our research. “Plus, there is a trend in developing smart homes, smart hospitals and smart cities – in all of which oxide semiconductor TFTs will play a key role.”

Oxide-based technology has seen rapid development when compared to its silicon counterpart which is increasingly close to some fundamental limitations. Prof Song says there has been fast progress in oxide-semiconductors in recent years and extensive efforts have been made in order to improve the speed of oxide-semiconductor-based TFTs. So much so some oxide-based technology has already started replacing amorphous silicon in some gadgets. Prof Song thinks these latest developments have brought commercialisation much closer.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fossilized skull of a small critter found in Utah underneath a dinosaur foot bone is providing insight into one of the most primitive mammalian groups and has scientists rethinking the timing of the break-up of Earth's bygone supercontinent Pangaea.

LONDON (Reuters) - A global team of scientists plans to scour the icy depths of Loch Ness next month using environmental DNA (eDNA) in an experiment that may discover whether Scotland's fabled monster really does, or did, exist.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An "alien asteroid" that circles the sun in the giant gas planet Jupiter's orbital path, but hurtling in the opposite direction, is the first-known permanent resident of our solar system that astronomers have concluded originated in another star system.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China launched a relay satellite early on Monday designed to establish a communication link between earth and a planned lunar probe that will explore the dark side of the moon, the official Xinhua news agency said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fresh examination of Chinese ceramics and other cargo from an important Java Sea shipwreck has led researchers to conclude that the vessel sank a century earlier than previously thought, providing insight into Asia's maritime trade more than 800 years ago.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China launched its first privately developed rocket from a launchpad in northwestern China on Thursday, state media said, the latest milestone in the country's ambitious space exploration program.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of lizards inhabiting the island of New Guinea boasts one of the most exotic traits of any animal: green blood. And scientists have been trying hard to figure out what benefit this characteristic -- caused by high levels of an ordinarily toxic green bile pigment -- may give them.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After detecting a whiff of oxygen, astronomers have determined that stars in a faraway galaxy formed 250 million years after the Big Bang -- a rather short time in cosmic terms -- in a finding that sheds light on conditions in the early universe.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new look at old data is giving scientists a fresh reason to view Europa, a moon of Jupiter, as a leading candidate in the search for life beyond Earth, with evidence of water plumes shooting into space.

LONDON (Reuters) - Stephen Hawking's family have invited time travelers to his memorial service, seeking to tackle one of the curiosities that eluded the British physicist during his extraordinary life.

NASA's launch of the Mars Science Laboratory -- hampered by technical difficulties and cost overruns -- has been delayed until the fall of 2011, NASA officials said at a news conference Thursday in Washington.

There has been much confusion and misinformation in recent weeks about our Consumer Products Inventory (CPI). Much of this confusion was sparked by a recent report from Friends of the Earth (FOE) on nanoscale materials in food, as well as news articles from Mother Jones and other outlets focused in on the use of nanoscale […]

The updated Nanotechnology Consumer Products Inventory now contains 1,628 consumer products that have been introduced to the market since 2005, representing a 24 percent increase since the last update in 2010. In addition to finding new products introduced to the market, the newly re-launched inventory seeks to address scientific uncertainty with contributions from those involved […]

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health are taking public comment on their plans for a new exposure assessment and epidemiological study of U.S. workers that are exposed to carbon nanotubes and nanofibers.

The Food & Drug Administration has released two new guidance documents for public comment outlining agency policy for the use of nanotechnology in food ingredients and packaging and the use of nanotechnology in cosmetic products.

The European Commission’s Science in Society Programme reflects on how to proceed towards Responsible Research and Innovation in the Information and Communication Technologies and Security Technology fields.

Today the Food Standards Authority issued a report on consumer attitudes to the use of nanotechnology in Food, drinks and other related products such as processing and packaging. The results, based on focus group studies, suggest that the public perception of nanotechnology in food is not negative, and is based on weighing up the benefits […]

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) have just posted a new video on the safe development of nanotechnology, featuring former PEN Science Advisor Andrew Maynard, as part of their series of nano educational podcasts.

A new PEN report provides the first ever analysis of voluntary initiatives to regulate nanotechnology. As nanotechnologies move forward, along with other emerging technologies, voluntary programs will play an important role in the governance portfolio available to the federal government as well as states and municipalities.

AOL News published a three part series on nanotechnology. “Nanotechnology has long been hyped for its potential to cure diseases, ease energy problems, supercharge our computers and more. But increasing evidence shows that the engineered particles could pose a giant risk to the environment and human life.”

A new paper makes a case for organizing collective responsibility through instruments beyond the regulatory system, such as codes of conduct and various deliberative assessment mechanisms within and outside the policy context.

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PARIS (Reuters) - Advertising group Publicis will unveil its internal collaborative network "Marcel" on Thursday and hopes to have 90 percent of its staff using it by 2020, in a move designed to improve the interaction between Publicis' various agencies.

(Reuters) - Lawyers for Elliott Broidy, a top fundraiser for U.S. President Donald Trump, have sent out more than 40 subpoenas to internet service providers, lobbying firms and others in an escalating legal fight against Qatar for allegedly hacking into his emails, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Indonesian ride-hailing and online payment firm Go-Jek on Thursday said it would enter Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines in the next few months, investing $500 million in its international push.

TORONTO/KIEV (Reuters) - The U.S. government said late on Wednesday that it would seek to wrestle hundreds of thousands of infected routers and storage devices from the control of hackers who security researchers warned were planning to use the "botnet" to attack Ukraine.

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Amazon Web Services is looking to invest in Chile for the long-term as part of a larger Latin American expansion plan, a senior executive said on Wednesday after meeting with Chilean President Sebastian Pinera.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Uber cut its losses almost in half and its ride bookings jumped 51 percent since one year ago, the Silicon Valley ride-services firm said on Wednesday, showing that months of scandal and retreating from overseas markets have not slowed its business.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Negative news stories about Tesla Inc have hit "fever pitch", but the electric carmaker's stock price is likely to surge as output of its Model 3 sedan improves, according to an analyst research report.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Facebook is unlikely to compensate the 2.7 million European users whose data was improperly shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica because sensitive bank account data had not been shared, the company said on Wednesday.

(Reuters) - Tesla Inc's Model 3 sedan recorded more registrations in California than its class rivals BMW 3-Series and Mercedes C-Class in the first quarter, according to a report by the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA). Model 3 registrations totaled 3,723, or 14.3 percent of the near-luxury segment, compared with 3,323 for the Mercedes […]

CISCO's cyber intelligence unit Talos on Wednesday saying hackers have infected at least half a million routers and storage devices in dozens of countries around the world for a possible cyber attack on Ukraine next month.

A British university student has created a range of water-colour paints made from discarded cosmetics, which she calls an example of how the so-called 'circular economy' can help improve the environment.

Using data collected from underwater drones, merchant ships, fishing boats and even explorers, a new scientific project aims to map out the ocean floor by 2030 and solve one of the world's enduring mysteries. Stuart McDill reports.

British game maker Bossa Studios releases Worlds Adrift, an ambitious adventure game designed that has taken three years and the up-front involvement of 50,000 gamers to create. Stuart McDill was at the launch.

Microsoft under CEO Satya Nadella has refocussed to double down on enterprise, artificial intelligence and cloud services, and today the company took the wraps a new project for advertising giant Publicis that shows how it is leveraging all three to expand its business. At an event in Paris, the CEOs of the two companies unveiled […]

TechCrunch scoured all of Europe to find the most innovative and disruptive early-stage startups to launch at TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Europe 2018 at VivaTech. And today starting at 9:05 am CET on the TechCrunch homepage you can watch the pitches from the latest 15 Startup Battlefield companies. Each company will pitch for six minutes on […]

Of all of the visions of the future that have been rolled out over the years, perhaps none have had as persistent a hold on the imagination as flying cars (well… maybe jetpacks… But flying cars are right up there). As these technologies move from the realms of the plausible to the probable, they’re finding […]

There’s good news for consumers in Southeast Asia who are feeling the void after Uber left the region. That’s because Go-Jek, the Indonesia-based ride-hailing company backed by Google, Tencent and others, has officially announced plans to move into four new markets. Go-Jek said today it will move into Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines initially […]

Fintech startup Revolut is adding Bitcoin Cash and Ripple to its cryptocurrency feature. While cryptocurrency isn’t really Revolut’s focus point, it’s a good way to get started with cryptocurrencies. If you have a Revolut account, you can now buy and hold Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Bitcoin Cash. Behind the scene, the startup has partnered […]

You’ll soon have more options for staying secure on Facebook with two-factor authentication. Facebook is simplifying the process for two-factor verification on its platform so you won’t have to give the company your phone number just to bring additional security to your device. The company announced today that it is adding support for third-party authentication […]

Square, the company that provides payments and other business services to merchants, is today taking another step in its gradual expansion outside of the U.S. Stand — one of Square’s key pieces of hardware, turning an iPad into a point of sale system — is launching in the U.K. It will sell for £64 (+VAT) […]

Apple has decided to work with Volkswagen for some of its self-driving car efforts, The New York Times reported today. The plan, according to the NYT, is to turn some of Volkswagen’s T6 Transporter vans into autonomous shuttles for employees. However, this project is reportedly behind schedule and taking up much of the time of […]

Tinder will now help you find matches with those people you may cross paths with in your day-to-day life. As promised earlier, the company today is announcing the launch of a new location-based feature that will narrow your list of potential dating prospects to those who hit up your same bar for after-work drinks, or […]

Betaworks is hosting TechCrunch’s Include Office Hours for the month of May. For the first time ever, Include Office Hours will be bi-coastal — held in San Francisco and New York on the same day at 2pm local time at each location. On Tuesday, May 29th, partners Peter Rojas and Matt Hartman will be meeting with startup […]

Investing in initial coin offerings, or ICOs, is a minefield. This isn’t just true for people with absolutely no technical background but also for many investors who may be well-versed in tech but still struggle to understand many projects’ white papers. Enter TruStory, a platform for users to research and validate claims that people make […]

Uber’s CEO is in Paris this week meeting with the French president to talk tech in Europe and expanding its insurance coverage in the region, but back in the U.S. the company is moving ahead on another kind of expansion. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Uber is raising another secondary round of funding of up […]

Elon Musk has, as I imagine he often does during meetings or long car rides, come up with an idea for a new thing. Unlike the HyperLoop, which was cool, and various space-related ideas, which we know he's at least partly expert about, this one is just plain bad. It's basically Yelp But For Journalism.

GUN is an open-source decentralized database service that allows developers to build fast peer-to-peer applications that will work, even when their users are offline. The company behind the project (which should probably change its name and logo…) today announced that it has raised just over $1.5 million in a seed round led by Draper Associates. […]

A uniquely 21st-century constitutional question received a satisfying answer today from a federal judge: President Trump cannot block people on Twitter, as it constitutes a violation of their First Amendment rights. The court also ruled he must unblock all previously blocked users. "No government official is above the law," the judge concluded.

On the same day that Spotify’s class-action settlement with musicians gets final approval, the company is making a big push to encourage artists to participate on its streaming service – in this case, by offering them a host of educational material to help them get started. The streaming service today is launching its own video series […]

Uber, which had already pulled its autonomous cars off the road following a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona, is officially calling it quits in the state of Arizona, The Wall Street Journal first reported, citing an internal memo from Uber Advanced Technologies Group lead Eric Meyhofer. As part of the wind-down, Uber has let go […]

Samsung’s AR Emojis were met with a…lukewarm reception when they launched alongside the Galaxy S9. The augmented reality avatars were regarded as a me-too response to Apple’s Animojis — and more to the point, were downright creepy. But at launch, the company brought one key element to the offering that Apple hasn’t: a content partnership. […]

A slew of well-funded new entrants backed by massive amounts of capital are chasing Tesla’s lead in an effort to power the next generation of the electric vehicle industry. Electric vehicle startups have raised more than $2 billion in the U.S. over the first months of 2018 alone, a huge increase over the $650 million […]

New sodium-based all-solid-state batteries could enable future energy storage devices using only the easy-to-access, cheap and earth abundant elements sodium, silicon and phosphorous (Na, Si and P). By shaping them into sodium phosphidosilicates containing large supertetrahedral entities, scientists generated solid electrolytes with very high ionic conductivity.

Scientists have introduced a new strategy for control through altering pH value. It is based on ethylenediamine, which only supports the assembly of DNA components in a neutral to acidic environment - independent of the base sequences and without metal ions.

Depending on the lighting, the surface of appropriately crafted nanoparticles can change its topography. Researchers have shown that the molecular mechanism they have designed makes it possible, by the use of light, to effectively uncover or hide catalyst molecules. The technique they present leads to qualitatively new possibilities to control the course of chemical reactions.

Scientists demonstrated that scanning photocurrent microscopy could provide the optoelectronic information needed to improve the performance of devices for power generation, communications, data storage, and lighting.

Researchers applied a technique using 3D X-ray tomography of an electrode to better understand what is happening on the inside of a lithium ion battery and ultimately build batteries with more storage capacity and longer life.

Very different from piezoelectric and other energy harvesting technologies, new research shows that water vapor or moisture expand the range of natural phenomena that can be used to generate electric power. Researchers demonstrate that moisture, a vast kind of resource existing ubiquitously on earth and in biological organisms, can be exploited as a novel harvestable […]